Internet delivery of digital content to IPTVs continues to increase, giving rise to an equally challenging issue of content navigation and management. Because of the IPTV's unique situation of being a shared device that is controlled by a simple input device, it is difficult to find an ingenious solution that will resolve this issue without excessively raising hardware costs, especially for multiple users. It is impractical to make a remote controller for all possible functions, because the same will significantly increase costs. It is also difficult to navigate around a large IPTV screen, searching for content, without disturbing the viewing experience of other users. Consequently, issues of cumbersome data entry, limitations in memory and processing power, difficulties in effective content searches and the traditional, but limited, one-to-one interaction with the IPTV remain as major obstacles.
In particular, the one-to-one interaction only allows one user to browse content on the IPTV at one time, and even that navigation is with the cumbersome user interface. Even where alternative control devices have been proposed, the alternative control devices utilize their own systems and thus are still one-to-one on a system basis.